Here I Suggest defining imperfection as an event that takes
place solely in the public realm. There are no intimate
imperfections. In intimacy there is only disappointment. And
disappointment is relative to one’s self- perception. It takes
numerous eyes—literally a public gaze—for the idea of imperfection
to coalesce and rise above the shimmering and hardly measurable
line of the personal.

Such a definition has two consequences. First, to consider
imperfection in the public sphere is to make it an irregularity
that takes place inside the consensus on how things
should unfold. It is a deviation. In critical terms
one could say that imperfection only happens inside the spectacle,
in the broader sense of the word. Second, public imperfection is
expected to reveal the humanity, the unpredictability of everything
that depends on flesh, blood, and doubts when it is cast in the
spotlight and channeled through the media apparatus. It is a
revelatory accident, and as such it can be conveniently put aside,
pointed at, and examined.

But what about imperfection when it is an integral part of the
spectacle?

I am not talking about staged accidents or rehearsed comedy
routines aimed at creating shock value and uneasy reactions. I am
not even talking about imperfect moments when they are recuperated
and reproduced ad infinitum on online channels like YouTube, with
the harsh buzzword “fail” having upstaged the neologism “blooper”
that used to label them not long ago.

I am talking about imperfection as a medium in and of itself: as
an apparatus producing situations, articulations, and communicative
stances that would otherwise remain impossible in a
performance.

Following the impressive normalization of the public figure of
David Bowie accomplished by the David Bowie is
traveling exhibition opened first at the Victoria and Albert Museum
in London, I started thinking about the amount of risks involved in
the career of such an artist whose every performance has not only
been a reinvention of his aesthetic but also a liability. Sheer
talent and artistic intuition do not even begin to explain how such
reinventions could be accepted by the public without a certain
amount of disasters or, at the very least, failures. But in the
public eye, at least in the eye of the public who rushed to see an
exhibition devoted to his timeliness and timelessness
as a performer, David Bowie has never failed.

One thing leading to another, I came upon online footage of
Bowie performing his song “Young Americans” on the Dick
Cavett Show in 1974. Right out of the gate, this is
interesting. Because for anyone remotely interested in 1970s’
nostalgia, 1974 can come across as the imperfect year par
excellence. It always seems to me like nothing much happened in
1974 pop culture.

Tellingly, the album Young Americans is arguably
the weakest among Bowie’s otherwise impressive output during that
decade. But it did produce two hit songs: “Young Americans” and
“Fame.” Both songs attempt to appropriate and channel the idioms of
African-American soul and funk music through a barely noticeable,
and yet ever-present, artificiality. Bowie himself
spoke in interviews of wanting to do “plastic soul” music.

In hindsight, Bowie’s endeavour on this mid-1970s American
television appearance can strike us as extremely brash. Not only
was he completely rebranding himself (before that, he was a
bisexual alien), but he was doing so by highlighting, instead of
attenuating, the original takeover of black music accomplished two
decades earlier by Elvis Presley for the pleasure of the white
middle-class masses and the profit of the white music industry.

Looking at the footage, Bowie’s performance is “perfectly
imperfect” in this regard. Everything about his physical persona is
so evidently white. His face, his guitar (a model
commonly associated with country music), his shoes, the awkwardness
of his dance moves that are impaired by his over-the-top jacket,
the cocaine infamously overtaking his system at the time. The stiff
awkwardness of his moves is especially striking. Here is a
professional mime and dancer, a choreographer, a consummate stage
artist who can barely break loose with what is traditionally
regarded as the most danceable music in the world. And he is
surrounded by...

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